Education and the American Dream was the theme of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s keynote speech at Making Community Colleges Work, a National Journal event at Miami Dade College. The son of immigrants, Rubio started his career as an attorney with $100,000 in student loans. He proposed income-based repayment of student loans and Income Sharing Agreements, expanding vocational education, easing accreditation for online educators and testing to prove competency.

Ten years after 10th grade, 33 percent of young people had earned bachelor’s degrees or higher, reports a longitudinal federal study. Nine percent reported their highest credential was an associate degree and 10 percent earned a certificate, Another third reported “some college” but no credential.
Sixty-three percent were working and finished with school; another 19 percent were working and taking college classes. Five percent were taking courses and not working, while 13 percent were out of work and out of school.

Forty percent of those who’d attended college did not take out student loans and another 16 percent borrowed less than $10,000. Thirty-three percent borrowed $10,000 to $50,000 for college and 11 percent took out $50,000 or more in student loans.

High school grades strongly predicted college success. Only 12.4 percent of C students (2.0 to 2.49) and 27.6 percent of C+ students (2.5 to 2.99) earned a bachelor’s degree. That rose to 50.1 percent for B students (3.00 to 3.49) and 76 percent for students with a 3.50 or better.

30-Year-Old Has Earned $11 More Than He Would Have Without College Education headlines The Onion. It’s a parody that’s all too close to reality.
“After accounting for the cost of tuition, four years of lost earning potential, and the minimal increase in salary an undergraduate degree provides,” 30-year-old Patrick Moorhouse of Dublin, Ohio has raised his earnings by $11, reports The Onion. Moorhouse’s more prestigious first-choice college would have led to $54 more in earnings, said researcher Ken Overton.

“If Patrick had started working straight out of high school, he would have had slightly fewer job options than he does now, but living at home instead of a dorm or student apartment even just those first two years would have added at least $16,000 in total savings, which pretty much evens things out.”

However, it’s impossible to “put a price on the 12 Post-WWII European History lectures Moorhouse attended junior year,” the study noted.

The “easy, cheap and indiscriminate availability of student loans ” juices demand and helps universities raise their prices, writes Johnsen. The Obama administration keeps sending out “signals about how ‘easy’ it will be to repay these huge loans after you graduate with a little help from Your Friend, The Federal Government.”

Student loan default rates continue to rise. After two years, 10 percent of graduates and dropouts are in default; that rises to 14.7 percent after three years. That doesn’t count borrowers who aren’t paying the full amount but are in “forbearance” or income-based repayment programs.

If colleges and universities are judged by former students’ earnings, community colleges will look bad, a dean writes. When community college students go on to a bachelor’s degree, the two-year school gets no credit for their success.